Objectivity vs. Credibility

Megan Gorey
mg908407@ohio.edu

Objectivity: –noun
1. the state or quality of being objective: He tries to maintain objectivity in his judgment.
2. intentness on objects external to the mind.
3. external reality.

Dr. Thomas Suddes is my professor for reporting public affairs. His class is one of the few classes in my college career where I have written down a professor’s quotes from the quarter on the inside of the front cover.

On the first evening of our class, Dr. Suddes simply and truthfully stated that real news is something that someone doesn’t want you to know. He went on to tell us that the biggest job of journalists is to be the “WD40 of government;” to inform the public of what the government was doing and find out what the government wasn’t telling the people.

In my opinion, one of the hardest times to be a journalist is during a national state of emergency or attack. As mentioned in the article by Brent Cunningham, “Re-thinking Objectivity,” some subject surrounding the Iraq war weren’t even touched by journalists until the President himself 'put them on the table.'

In the FDR and Progressive Era, it was the belief that the journalists role was to report the doings and inside business of the government. To the Progressives, government behaves better when they know they are being watched. So was the media not watching the government following the events of September 11th or was it just being patriotic?

Granted, journalists are not fortune tellers and could not report on the aftermath of the war before it happened. However, being objective is not an excuse for being passive. Even if the media did not know exactly what the U.S. government would do next or how its actions would affect U.S. foreign relations, it could have reported what was happening right now.

Objectivity becomes a love-hate relationship for many journalists because it seems almost impossible to achieve. In our readings from the first week, The Elements of Journalism, quotes the president of the Newspaper Guild, Linda Foley, at the CCJ forum saying, “It’s credibility, more than objectivity, that’s important for us in our industry…. There has to be a culture in the newsroom that allows a journalist to have free and open discussion.”